The Toughest Indian in the World: Stories

by Sherman Alexie

  A blood parade.

  I could also see the pain and terror in other white faces. Pale hands pressed to open mouths. Mothers dragged their daughters away. Young white women wept and screamed. Strong men broke through the crowds and stood in front of the bus, trying to stop it, but the soldiers beat them and dragged them away. A Jesuit priest stood on the roof of the bank and shouted prayers for everybody on the bus. The Presbyterian minister attempted to stop the bus by ramming it with her ancient automobile. The bus barely slowed as it crushed her. Parishioners pulled her body from the wreck and wept. Neighbor scuffled with neighbor. One son fainted in the street after he saw the hate in his father’s eyes.

  The crowd, friendly and not, surged toward the bus.

  Outside the bus, the soldiers panicked and fired indiscriminately, while inside the bus, the soldiers pushed us down into our seats and covered us with their bodies.

  Outside, a burning tire rolled past a little girl in a yellow dress.

  Inside, the high-pitched screams of Indian children could have been the high-pitched wails of Indian singers.

  Outside, the hands that pounded on the bus could have been the same hands that pounded drums.

  That music sounded exactly the same as all of the music I had ever heard before.

  One singing bullet passed through the front window of a blue house, through the living room and narrow kitchen, and out the back window where it lodged in the thick bark of an oak tree.

  The clouds of smoke were shaped like horses.

  Inside, I struggled against the white soldier who covered me. I punched and kicked at him, but he did not respond. At first, I thought he was immune to pain, but then I looked up at his face and saw the dark bullet hole between his eyes. With all of my strength, I pushed his body to the floor. He was a young man, barely older than me, and I mourned his death as I had been taught to mourn, briefly and powerfully.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to him. I kneeled beside him, touched his face, and closed his blue eyes.

  I prayed for him, the enemy, and wondered if he had prayed for me the night before, or the week before, when he had first been told, when he had first been given the orders, the battle plan, when he first discovered that he would be coming to my reservation to steal me away from my mother and father. I wondered if he had mourned for me.

  Looking at him, his slight body and small hands, purple and yellow with bruises, I knew he had prayed for me. I knew he had wrapped those pale hands so tightly into prayer fists that he’d bruised his skin.

  Prayer is painful.

  Using a vocabulary I did not understand, the other soldiers were screaming orders at one another.

  War and the idea of war.

  I stood as the bus rolled past the last few protesters standing at the edge of the town and gained speed. Still standing, I looked back and saw one small white boy sitting in his wheelchair in the middle of the road. He was as bald and translucent as a newborn. As the town rioted behind him, that white boy weakly raised his arm. He grew smaller and smaller as the bus accelerated. Soon that pale boy was a shadow rising just above the horizon, then he was a part of the horizon, and then he was nothing at all.

  On the bus, the soldiers cursed and wept angry tears. One green-eyed white soldier touched the face of the white soldier who had been shot in the head.

  “He’s dead,” that green-eyed white soldier whispered to me.

  “I know,” I said. “He covered me.”

  I had been saved.

  “Okay, okay, grunts,” shouted the soldier-who-looked-like-me. “Let’s get it together. Let’s get our shit together.”

  The soldiers stood and straightened as one body. I was made instantly jealous by their obvious tribal bond. The soldiers pushed all of us back into our seats. Most of us sat with our backs straight, as we had been taught to do by seven generations of tribal school teachers.

  “Get in your damn seats,” the soldiers shouted at us, the Indian children, though we were all sitting in our original seats.

  “Let’s get it together!” shouted the soldier-who-looked-like-me. His face was brightly lit by his anger. The long scar on his face was swollen and purple, as if he’d been injured just a few moments earlier rather than years before.

  The bus rolled past isolated farmhouses where whole families stood on front lawns and watched us pass. One large white woman held a glass of lemonade in one hand and used her other to shade her eyes. She wore a white sundress and white pumps. She was beautiful. I wanted to climb out of the bus and call her mother. I wanted to lay my head down in her fleshy lap and listen to her stories.

  “Talk to me,” I whispered to her image and then to the memory of her image. I wanted to hear a story told by a woman who knew thousands of stories. Stories had always kept me safe before. I had always trusted stories. Frightened and tired, I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to tell myself a story. But I could think of nothing but the blood on that dead soldier’s face. I could hear nothing but the monotonous hum of the bus. And I was still thinking of that blood when the bus rolled through the front gates of Steptoe Air Force Base.

  At the gates, a few hundred protesters were being beaten by a few hundred soldiers with clubs. Smoke and tear gas. One large soldier raised his rifle into the air and fired at something only he could see. Another soldier walked up to an old-man protester, pressed a pistol against the old man’s temple, and pulled the trigger. Blood fountained from the old man’s head as he toppled to the ground. A third soldier, screaming something I could not hear, ran up to the murderous soldier. With their hands swinging wildly in obscene and obscure gestures, the two soldiers argued with each other. They argued until the murderous soldier pressed his pistol against the other soldier’s chest and pulled the trigger again. And then both soldiers were swallowed up by the surging crowd.

  Contamination.

  As the bus pulled through the heavily fortified gates and drove deeper into the base, I saw plane after plane lifting off from runways. I didn’t know then that those planes were carnivorous. I didn’t know then that the bellies of those planes were filled with Indians.

  I saw soldiers herding Indians into large buildings made of cold metal, steel and aluminum. I tasted steel and aluminum. The darkest Indians, the ones with black hair and brown skin, were herded into a red building. The Indians with brown hair and lighter eyes were herded into an orange building. The Indians with light hair and eyes, the Indians with white skin, were herded into a pale building.

  I suddenly wondered if we were going to be slaughtered. I wondered if we were going to be eaten. I wondered if rich white men were going to turn the pages of books that were made with our skins.

  On our bus, the soldiers pulled the Indian children to their feet.

  “Move, move, move!” shouted the soldier-who-looked-like-me.

  Once we were off the bus, the soldiers divided us into three groups, each destined for a different building.

  I was in the darkest group with two Juniors, a John, Kim and Arlene Cox, Billy the Retard, and the third Kateri. There were another dozen Indian kids I didn’t recognize, but we had the same purple-black hair and brown skin. Randy Peone, the green-eyed Spokane, was in the second group with two Juniors, one James, two Kateris, Tyrone, the half-black kid who had dark skin, and many other half-breed kids. Sam the Indian, who was really white, was in the third group with two of the boys named James, two Johns, the girl named Junior, Teddy, the half-white kid with blond hair and gray eyes, and a hundred others. They were the largest group. When they were separated from each other, Tyrone and Teddy, the half-breed half brothers, wailed and beat their heads against the ground. The blood on their foreheads was impossibly bright.

  “Pick them up! Pick them up!” shouted a tall white soldier with a crooked nose.

  “No blood! No blood!” shouted another white soldier with large hands.

  Strange aircraft hovered above us. I looked up and swore I could see tears on the face of one pilot. I wondered if he
was Jesus.

  There was so much gunfire in the distance that I thought it was birds singing. At that moment, the third Kateri rose up with the coiled metal spring she had pulled from her seat on the bus. She was beautiful. I could see in her face and form the woman she would have become. Screaming with rage, the third Kateri shoved that spring into the brown eye of a black soldier. She broke free and ran. Sam the Indian ran after her. Escape, and the thought of escape. I wanted to run with them, but my knees gave out, dropping me to the ground, and saved me. I watched Kateri and Sam the Indian run. I wanted to know how it felt to run.

  “Stop them!” shouted the soldier-who-looked-like-me.

  A white soldier, young and wide-eyed, raised his rifle and pulled the trigger twice. A chorus of screams. Sam and Kateri fell. They were now just two bags of blood.

  “Goddamn it, who fired their weapon?” shouted a white officer. “Who fired their weapon?”

  The wide-eyed white soldier raised his hand and the white officer stormed over to him. The officer snatched the soldier’s rifle from his hands.

  “Who gave you the order to fire?” shouted the officer.

  “Nobody, sir!”

  “I said, who gave you the order to fire?”

  “Nobody, sir!”

  “Then why in the hell did you fire?”

  “They were escaping, sir!”

  “We’re in the middle of a goddamn Air Force base,” shouted the officer. “Did you honestly believe those kids were going to escape?”

  The wide-eyed soldier hesitated.

  “I, I, I didn’t think, sir,” he said.

  Furious, the officer smashed the barrel of the rifle down on the soldier’s nose. The wide-eyed soldier crumpled to the pavement.

  “Somebody get his dumb ass out of here!” shouted the officer.

  Two other soldiers ran in and dragged the unconscious soldier away.

  “Goddamn it!” shouted the officer. “This is a military operation and I want some discipline! I want some goddamn organization!”

  The officer waded into the crowd of dark Indian children, scooped up a little brown girl, and marched toward the red building.

  “Let’s go, honey,” the officer said to the little brown girl in his arms. “We’ve got work to do.”

  Silently and obediently, the rest of us in the red group followed the officer. I didn’t know what happened to the other groups and would never know.

  We walked into a bright light.

  I walked into the bright light.

  Inside the red building, beyond the bright light, I saw many more Indians than I had ever seen in one place in my entire life. There were so many Indians that I had to close my eyes against the magnitude of it. I wondered if every Indian in the world was inside that building.

  We were forced into cattle chutes and led from station to station.

  At the first station, we were shaved bald.

  I was shaved bald by a white woman. I looked into her eyes as she took the last of my hair. She was beautiful. She was crying.

  “What do you do with it?” I asked her.

  “With what?” she asked.

  “With the hair.”

  She looked down at her white uniform covered with the stray hairs of thousands of Indians. She looked down at all of the dark hair carpeting the floor.

  Janitors were sweeping the hair into enormous piles, some of them taller than me.

  “The hair,” I asked her. “What happens to it?”

  She opened her mouth to say something, but changed her mind, and then she was gone, moving to the next Indian in line.

  I knew they must have burned the hair after we left.

  I imagined the smoke and smell of burning hair filling the air.

  At the next station, we were stripped of our clothes. Old men and old women, young boys and young girls, powerfully built fathers and beautiful mothers, all naked. I covered my genitals with my hands. Humiliated and defenseless, I kneeled down on the floor and tried to hide my body. Other Indians proudly stood still, their hands at their sides, and stared into the eyes of every soldier. At the third station, doctors and nurses huddled over our bodies and thrust tools and fingers into our ears, mouths, noses, vaginas, penises, and anuses. Sickly people were led away, through another door, and into what I was sure were the ovens.

  Fire.

  I tried not to breathe, because I knew I would be inhaling the ash those sickly Indians had become. We were then forced into red jumpsuits and marched across a brightly lit tarmac into the belly of a plane. There were a thousand Indians inside that plane. I counted them, the sound of their screams and whimpers, the sound of their curses and whispers. We were made to crouch as the plane lifted up into the sky. That was the first time I had ever consciously thought about flight. I realized I had never flown before and laughed hysterically. A large hand reached out and touched my shoulder. It was too dark to see. That hand could have been my mother’s or my father’s. It had to be somebody’s mother or father.

  “Hush, hush,” said a voice.

  I moved away from that hand. I crawled through the dark, searching for something familiar. I smacked my face into another face.

  “Billy,” said the other face. I recognized it instantly, recognized the familiar lilt and upward inflections of my fellow tribal member.

  “Billy,” I repeated.

  “Billy,” he said again.

  “Billy the Retard,” I said.

  “Billy the Retard,” he repeated.

  “Big Bill,” I said.

  “Big Bill,” he repeated.

  “What’s happening?” I asked him.

  He leaned in close to me. I could smell him. He smelled like the water and trees of home.

  “They’re going to take the tomorrow out of our bones,” he said.

  “The tomorrow?” I asked.

  “The tomorrow,” repeated Billy.

  I could hear his heart and stomach working inside his body.

  “I dreamed it,” he said.

  “I know it,” I said. “I dreamed it too.”

  “They’re going to take the tomorrow,” Billy said again.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Big Bill,” said Billy the Retard.

  “I don’t understand,” I said again.

  The plane rose higher and higher above the earth. At that height, I knew gravity was a story passed from one generation of undiscovered birds to the next. At that height, oxygen was a sacrament.

  The plane landed in a flat, anonymous desert. Other planes landed in the flat, anonymous desert.

  A thousand Indians, beaten and exhausted, all dressed in red jumpsuits, stepped carefully from the planes, onto the tarmac crowded with soldiers, and huddled together in the lonely desert. We moved as one unit, as if we were migrating birds.

  The soldiers’ faces were slack and anonymous, save for the brown face of the soldier-who-looked-like-me. We regarded each other. His eyes narrowed and he turned his head away with disdain or shame, or a combination of both, or perhaps with no emotion at all.

  I recognized none of the other Indian prisoners, or perhaps I recognized all of them. In the haze and heat of the desert, we all looked alike, though I knew intuitively that we could not all look alike, especially given the vast tribal and geographic differences among us. But, as I scanned the faces around me, I saw that we all had the same brown skin, long noses, strong jawlines, and large cheekbones. We could all have been siblings. We could all have been the same person. We could all have been a thousand vestigial reproductions of a single organ, all of us struggling to find a purpose, a space to stand and breathe, enough room to function within the large body of a thing, a person, a crowd called Indian.

  Like a newborn, I was losing my ability to tell the difference between my body and the body of the person next to me.

  There, in the desert, the horizon was not a straight line stretched taut between the sky and earth. Instead, the horizon was a series of arcs that connecte
d to form a circle of red sand that was a hundred miles wide at its diameter. I stood at the exact epicenter of that circle. I stood at the exact epicenter of seven different circles: circle of red sand, circle of Indians, circle of heat, circle of soldiers, circle of sun, circle of blood, circle of wind. Like a newborn, I turned my head and closed my eyes because it was all too much to comprehend. I listened and heard. Indians wept. I opened my eyes and witnessed. Children climbed into the arms of women strangers and reinvented their mothers. Men fainted and were held up only by the sheer weight of the people around them. The soldiers shouted at one another, then shouted at us. Soon, we were marched away from the plane and into the desert. We followed a path worn into the sand by thousands of recent footprints. Other Indians, other siblings. I knew that path would be swallowed up overnight by the sand and wind.

  The soldiers marched us beyond the first horizon and through the one door carved into the desert floor. We carefully descended a long series of staircases. I counted steps. Fourteen steps to every flight of stairs. I counted flights. Ten, thirty, fifty, more. I counted and counted until the numbers grew too large for me to remember clearly. I counted until the numbers themselves held no meaning I could decipher. At the bottom of every flight of stairs, we paused on the landing. At every landing, another group of soldiers stood at the entrance of a long dark tunnel. At the mouth of every dark tunnel, more and more Indians were separated from the rest and marched into the darkness beyond. I wondered when it would be my turn to walk into the darkness. I was not afraid of it, the dark. I wanted to give it a name, so I called it Mother.